Wednesday, September 19, 2012

New paper predicts AGW will cause ~ 12 million more serious crimes in US

A working paper from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government breathlessly predicts

"Between 2010 and 2099, climate change will cause an additional 30,000 murders, 200,000 cases of rape, 1.4 million aggravated assaults, 2.2 million simple assaults, 400,000 robberies, 3.2 million burglaries, 3.0 million cases of larceny, and 1.3 million cases of vehicle theft in the United States." [11.7 million additional crimes]

The paper fails to note the inconvenient truth that US per-capita property and violent crimes peaked before 1992 and have continuously declined since. Estimated homicide rates in the US have declined by almost 80% over the past 300 years since the Little Ice Age. Obviously, US crime rates are not a function of tiny long-term changes in average US or global temperatures over these time periods.

Total US Violent & Property crimes 1960-2012. Note: This graph does not account for the large increase in population.

Abstract: This paper estimates the impact of climate change on the prevalence of criminal activity in the United States. The analysis is based on a 50-year panel of monthly crime and weather data for 2,972 U.S. counties. I identify the effect of weather on monthly crime by using a semi-parametric bin estimator and controlling for county-by-month and county-by-year fixed effects. The results show that temperature has a strong positive effect on criminal behavior, with little evidence of lagged impacts. Between 2010 and 2099, climate change will cause an additional 30,000 murders, 200,000 cases of rape, 1.4 million aggravated assaults, 2.2 million simple assaults, 400,000 robberies, 3.2 million burglaries, 3.0 million cases of larceny, and 1.3 million cases of vehicle theft in the United States.The full paper is available for download at the link above.